Sophomore Kellee Benitez Emerges as Spectacular Artist

Kellee Benitez is one of Huntington High School’s most creative students, to be sure. The sophomore is among graphic arts teacher Kasmira Mohanty prized pupils. The teenager’s skills and techniques have advanced at a startling pace, so much so that one of her recent pieces has left art lovers in awe.

Ms. Benitez is a hardworking young woman who takes pride in her work. Coming to Huntington High School every morning makes her happy. She has developed many worthwhile and satisfying friendships and is enjoying an assortment of meaningful relationships with her teachers.

As an artist, Ms. Benitez is one of the high school’s finest. Her attention to even the smallest of details is inspiring and her creativity appears to know no bounds.

“My artwork ‘Sight and Sound’ was inspired by Helen Torr’s ‘From Piano (Music Painting),’” the teenager wrote in an artist’s statement that accompanies her work. “Music is a huge part of my life and Torr’s work was a perfect fit for me. I decided to focus on the sound waves created by music. I began by photographing many images using a photographic technique called ‘painting with light’. As I was photographing I was thinking about chromesthesia which is a type of synesthesia in which sound involuntarily evokes an experience of color, shape, and movement. Individuals with sound-color synesthesia are consciously aware of their synesthetic color associations/perceptions in daily life.”

During a light painting photo shoot, Ms. Benitez made sure to try different movements and shapes while listening to different types of piano music. “I incorporated certain colors that evoke certain emotions,” she wrote in the artist’s statement. “For example, red represents excitement; yellow equals playfulness; green depicting tenderness and blue outlines sadness or being solemn. These are some related feelings people feel when listening to music or which they have to navigate on a daily basis. I used the raw photographs I had taken and created a symmetrical abstract design using three different images layered on top of each other.”

The teenager said she “took the premise even further” by adding visual rhythm by animating the colors within the composition. She employed an audio track of piano music to add sound to an otherwise still image. The result speaks for itself and has left the art world amazed. Click here to view the animated version.